by Robert Merle
Since Angelina wasn’t at home, I had a great fire lit in her room and, having undressed my poor Zara so close to the hearth that we were almost touching the flames, since she was now blue from the cold and shivering uncontrollably, I gave her an energetic rubdown, a task that, other than warming me greatly, had its own recompense, since her body was as beautiful as her face, and it would have been a great pity if she’d removed herself in her distress from the human race.
The chambermaids having refilled the bath with hot water, I jumped in beside Zara and continued my ministrations until she turned as pink as a crayfish, her face regaining its colour and her eyes recovering their sparkle. Then, hearing a noise at the front door, I let Florine take over and ran to the door, which Miroul opened, admitting Angelina, surprised to see me soaked through and dripping water, followed by Fogacer and Silvio, whose arrival evoked an equal degree of surprise from me since they’d just arrived on horseback from Paris, having sent ahead a letter that we had never received. Not wishing to inundate them with my embraces, I told Angelina that Zara was in her room, and, when she’d finished her bath, to avoid asking her any questions until I’d returned, having now to bathe and change my clothes to prevent catching my death of cold.
When I returned to Angelina’s room, a full hour later (having remembered that I owed Pierre de L’Étoile a letter and that I had to write it before the courier from Montfort left), I saw that my wife, as generous and caring as ever, had accomplished miracles, having washed Zara’s hair and dried it before the fire, then dressed her in her own most beautiful gown and adorned her with her most beautiful jewels—a triangular necklace of diamonds. Florine had brushed and arranged Zara’s hair, found slippers for her and applied make-up, eyeshadow and lipstick so that she was now as beautiful as I’d ever seen her.
Night was falling as I entered the room; the shutters were closed and the curtains drawn; the fire, to which Miroul had generously added new logs, was flaming brightly, and the room was pulverized with sweet perfume. It was all the cosier since one could hear the bitter winds of December howling outside, and brilliantly illuminated with all the candles that Florine had lit to pamper Zara. I was transported by the joy of seeing my beloved and Florine, so beautiful themselves, serving with such affection our Zara, in an effort to pull her from her despair (whose cause they did not yet know; all they knew was that she’d tried to drown herself)—sweet physicians that they fancied themselves, healing the soul by means of the body, and returning to Zara some appetite for life through this act of beautifying her.
They were just finishing their ministrations when I entered; then, each taking Zara by the hand, they illuminated her with a chandelier, and led her, not without some pomp and mystery, over to a large Venetian mirror that I’d given Angelina for her last saint’s day, and there Angelina told her to open her golden eyes, whereupon Zara cried out loud to see herself looking so beautiful, and then just as suddenly fell silent, lost in contemplation. I must say, speaking as a doctor, that this sudden and unexpected joy so infused her blood with vitality that her animal spirits were reinvigorated and her humours were realigned. And, immediately relieved to see her reborn and ascend from the depths of suffering into which she had fallen—so deep that she’d rejected God and the life that He had given her—we all surrounded her with love and caresses, and I told her repeatedly (with a knowing look at Angelina so that she would forgive my hyperbole) that there was no one on earth more delicious to behold and that our world would be desolate and deserted if we were to lose her.
And I must say that it is quite true that, apart from my Angelina, there was no more charming object than Zara on our earthly globe, which would be a mournful hell if her sex had been exiled from it. While receiving our embraces, squeezes, pats and kisses, though these last had to be very light in order not to ruin her make-up, my Zara was throwing me smiles and glances in the mirror, all the while twisting her long, lithe, buxom body into poses that showed to great advantage her sculpted profile, long and flexible neck, and beautiful green sparkling eyes with their tiny gold specks.
And when she was quite satisfied with all this attention, we had practically to force her to eat a bowl of hot soup, half a goblet of Bordeaux wine and an almond tart. When she had enjoyed of all of this without leaving a drop or a crumb, she announced she was renouncing food, drink and sleep for the rest of her life, so mortified was she at the terrible wrong she’d suffered.
“But what wrong is this, my Zara?” asked Angelina, fixing her beautiful, tender black eyes on her.
“Well, Mademoiselle Angelina,” cried Zara, her green eyes darkening with spiteful anger, “do you not know? Dame Gertrude has dared hire a personal chambermaid, a slattern of a scullery maid, a horrible imp who thinks she can take my place simply because she’s young.”
“But, Zara,” soothed Angelina very innocently, “Gertrude has not sent you away! Far from it! She simply wants to ease your burden by having Éloïse help you. The girl’s neither dirty nor ugly, from what I’ve seen.”
“Madame!” cried Zara, pacing back and forth in front of us, her eyes inflamed and wringing her hands. “You must not have looked carefully! The imp is not attractive, I can tell you. Her tits are bubbling out of her blouse, like milk boiling over on a fire, and her stomach is so big it touches her knees—and as for her arse, which I’ve seen naked, I swear, I can tell you it has hair on it!”
“What?” gasped my credulous Angelina. “On her buttocks? You really mean on her buttocks? Zara, that’s very strange. Couldn’t it be removed?”
“But to what barber at the baths would the slut dare show these horrors?” continued Zara, practically grinding her teeth. “Not to mention that she also has a very menacing and idiotic look, a snotty nose and smelly feet! Ah, what a beautiful chambermaid my mistress has hired… whom she presumes, Madame—hear me carefully, I beg you!—whom she presumes to have sleep with her, preferring her to me!” she lamented, beating her breast. “Ah, Madame! Madame! What an affront Dame Gertrude has made to me! What an abject affront! To prefer her to me! To me—the one who’s loved and served her!” she continued, glancing indignantly at her image in the Venetian mirror. “She’s taken this pile of filth and stuffed her in her bed! Monsieur chevalier, how can one who has flown so high end up landing in the manure pile?”
And at this thought, tears began to well up in her eyes. Seeing this, Florine cried:
“Madame, if you cry you’re going to ruin all my work!”
I know not by what miracle Zara managed to restrain her tears, but her eyes did remain dry, though they weren’t any the less full of sparks, projecting the heat of her Italian anger, and she managed to lift her head in pride, arching her back like a mare rearing and beating the air with its front hooves.
“But Zara,” soothed Angelina, her candid eyes opening wide, “I understand that many mistresses like the company of their chambermaids in bed, and the custom is quite widespread. After all, Zara, sleeping in one place or another is not so important. What difference does it make?”
“Not so important, Madame? My place in bed not so important? I’ve served Dame Gertrude with the most ardent devotion all these years and the first imp that comes along takes my place in her bed! No, Madame, I won’t tolerate it! And I’ll never set foot in Dame Gertrude’s house again until she’s sent this dirty scullery maid back to the manure pile from which she was spawned!”
“Now Zara,” said Angelina, “don’t talk this way! The poor girl has a human mother and father just like you!”
“No, Madame,” came Zara’s retort, as if she were quoting from one of the Gospels. “I affirm that she grew in the manure pile like a mushroom!”
“Zara,” I pointed out, thinking the moment had come to introduce a little realism into her inflamed hysteria, “it doesn’t look as though your mistress is going to obey you and send away this wench, if she’s grown accustomed to her. What are you going to do in this predicament?”
“Go back to the pond you
fished me out of!” cried Zara, crossing her arms over her chest. “What else can I do?”
“Ah, Zara,” cried Angelina, rushing over to her, “you’re not going to repeat this infamy! You’d be rejecting God and will lose your eternal salvation! No, no, my Zara,” she said, taking her in her arms and covering her with kisses, “if you don’t want to go back to Gertrude, we’ll keep you here in our lodgings with us.”
At this, showering us with infinite thanks, our Zara began to perk up a bit, preferring to be overwhelmed by our insistence than to return to her encounter with death (since, as she confessed later, she had developed a horror of water, to the extent that she frequently awoke at night feeling the pond closing around her and vines wrapping around her legs, pulling her under like so many hands).
And so it was that Zara came to take her place in the constellation of our household, a place that was honourable but not well defined since she seemed to have no role among our domestics other than an ornamental one, given that she never consented to dirty her hands with any sort of task, even of the lightest kind. So, for lack of any other function, she became a companion to Angelina, an office that was for my poor wife much more of a cross to bear than a pleasure, since her companion spent her time interminably and repetitively chewing over her recriminations against Gertrude in pathetic tones, her eyes shining, her mouth drawn in bitterness and her shoulders shaking in a flood of words so continuous and precipitous that they made you think of a rushing river and the inexorable mill wheel that it turns round and round. My poor Angelina emerged from these frenetic monologues with her head buzzing and her heart stricken, and in the end she begged me to serve as an intermediary with Gertrude to attempt to resolve this quarrel, which had come to seem of greater consequence than the war that was ravaging the kingdom and dividing our people.
I did my best, but failed completely to persuade the proud Norman lady to send Éloïse away and take Zara back, even though it seemed to me that she was beginning to tire of the former and regret losing the latter. But as we all know, a sense of pride and some small point of honour in not giving in often play a large role in such matters.
On the evening of their arrival at my little estate, I retired with Fogacer and Silvio to my library (whose books had increased greatly in number since the king had begun to shower me with wealth), and I assailed Fogacer with questions about the news from Paris. Standing on one leg like a heron, he stretched out his tall, thin silhouette in front of the fire, clothed in black as usual, standing at ease with his left hand on his hip; Silvio straddled a stool, and looked much bigger and stronger, with a beard sprouting on his chin.
“Well, mi fili,” said Fogacer, “the problem with being Machiavellian is that when double-dealing doesn’t work, you lose doubly: both the stakes and the consideration of the other players, since cheating is universally scorned. And so it is with our poor Henri. The large foreign army of Swiss and reiters, shaken by Guise at Vimory, was hit again at Auneau. These were small engagements that the League trumpeted as sublime victories, accustomed as they are to making every little Guisard cat into a tiger. And the reality is that they’re only giving these laurels to Guise to diminish any successes of the king, who heads a huge army that could exterminate the remains of the foreign army if he wished. But the king will have none of it. Why? Mi fili,” continued Fogacer, looking me in the eye, his eyebrows arched in confusion, “you did ask me to come here, but why?”
“I don’t know if I requested you to come,” I laughed, “but it turns out that I do need you here.”
“Well, I heard you! Primo, the king, who is human, abhors blood and massacres. Secundo, he doesn’t want to antagonize the reiters and the Swiss, since he thinks he may need their help soon against Guise. He’s in discussions with them and is paying them to leave his kingdom.”
“He’s paying them!”
“He’s paying them in linens, silks and in écus for their departure. Exeunt reiters and Swiss.”
“That’s good news!” I observed.
“It’s very bad news!” corrected Fogacer, stretching his long spidery arms so that they seemed to fill the library. “Because they’re now beginning to say in Paris that the reiters were called for, paid and sent home by the king, given how well he’s treated them! Now Paris is full of shouting! Clamour! Sermons! Raised fists! Henri is now almost universally hated and despised by the populace. And the Sorbonne—you’ve heard no doubt—the Sorbonne (that is to say, forty crusty pedants) got together to have a drink and concluded that it’s legal for them to remove the government from the hands of the king if things aren’t to their liking!”
“That’s rebellion!” I said.
“Open and frenzied! Ah, mi fili, Paris is boiling! The throne is beginning to wobble!”
This said, Fogacer threw himself down on the armchair I’d offered him when he came in, and, pointing at a cushion nearby, he said:
“My Silvio, come and sit here.”
I was very surprised to see Silvio—whom I’d seen so many times sitting at the feet of his master—openly pout and reply:
“Venerable doctor, with your permission, I’d rather stay where I am.”
This reply so startled Fogacer that he visibly paled and fell silent, his eyes closing and his upper lip beginning to tremble. This display left me surprised and, in a way, disappointed, since I’d always imagined that my former teacher at the school of medicine in Montpellier was able to rise above human emotions, both through his science and by the cold scalpel of his mind. Alas, these days I know all too well, now that I’m older, that one whom we may venerate as a demigod or hero in our childhood sometimes descends from his pedestal in tears, stung by the ingratitude or betrayal of a friend, who causes him all the more pain the closer he is to his heart.
Aware of this silence as it continued, and of Fogacer’s brown eyes fixed with astonishment on Silvio’s, still blinking as though the tyro had slapped him, and that he was unable to think of what to say or do in the pain he was feeling—not so much in his sense of honour as in his raw affections—I decided to break the cruel ice that had closed over his soul, and, attempting to distract him from the throes of this cruelty, I said:
“So what’s this about Navarre disappearing after Coutras, when he so unexpectedly disbanded his army?”
“Well,” explained Fogacer, his voice gradually regaining its timbre, “that was not a surprise to Henri. It’s proof that Navarre and the king never stopped working in concert. As you know, Navarre has always had the wisdom to pretend to be a madman. He disbanded his own army in order not to have to attack the army of the king, who is his declared enemy and secret ally. And so, to cover his inactivity, he hurried to lay a laurel wreath at the feet of his mistress, the beautiful Corisande. He’s still there, as profligate as a rat in straw.”
“Does Guise know this?”
“He didn’t learn it immediately,” said Fogacer as he stood up, his eyes still looking very sad under those arched eyebrows, his hand grazing, as if by accident, Silvio’s face with a constrained, almost furtive air. “He didn’t know it,” he repeated, turning away, his voice suddenly recovering its mocking and sarcastic tone, “and seeing the king warming himself by the fire, just as I am doing now, and believing—or wishing to believe—that Navarre was dead, as rumours had it in Paris, Guise asked His Majesty for news of him. At this the king gave him that sidelong glance that makes his Italian eyes so bright, and said with a smile, and in a tone that I can’t imitate, ‘I know about the rumour that’s circulating, and why you’re asking me about it. Well, he’s as dead as you are.’ Did you hear that, mi fili? ‘He’s as dead as you are’! All the pedants in the Sorbonne, putting their heads together, could spend the rest of time glossing that little phrase and find millions of meanings in it, the most obvious not being the right one. For example: ‘He’s as dead as you are alive,’ which is flat. Or again: ‘He’s dead like you, who are, alas, alive.’ This is even better: ‘He’s dead like you, whose death I hope for.�
�� Which is excellent.”
This said, arching his satanic eyebrow, he smiled his slow, sardonic, sinuous smile, which quickly turned into a bitter grimace, all his features contracting, hollowing out and shrinking into an expression of such bleak torment that, seeing it, I fell silent, unable to say a word. Then, suddenly, Fogacer took leave of me in a strangled voice, rose and turned away, casting the same constrained and furtive look at Silvio over his shoulder, and left the library.
The silence that followed his departure was deafening, and I expected that Silvio would also take his leave, but the young man just sat there on his stool, like a log, his eyes on the fire and his expression resolute, though looking both sad and terrified, so I finally decided to wish him a good evening and withdrew.
Six weeks after this terrible evening, which was doubly sad for me (since I’d both learnt of the failure of my master’s projects and witnessed Fogacer’s heart-rending troubles with Silvio), after having taken breakfast before heading out for my usual morning ride with Fogacer through the forest of Montfort, I was astonished to enter the stables and discover that he and his horse were not there. I called Miroul, who appeared looking very troubled and holding a letter from Fogacer, who’d left at daybreak for Paris, begging Miroul not to wake me. Miroul reported that Fogacer had told him that the circumstances of his sudden departure would be explained in the letter. Alarmed that he’d decided to run the risk of travelling alone on these dangerous roads all the way to Paris, I tore open the missive and read:
Mi fili,
I have never known in my troubled existence a wound that grieved me more than this one. Even the executioner, to whom I’m doubly destined—by both my nature and my unbelief—would be a briefer torment and provide me with a merciful death. Mi fili, forgive me for running off like an Englishman and for leaving Silvio there, who knows perfectly well why I’ve done so. Alas, the further I continue in this miserable life, the more I discover that to love is ultimately to suffer and suffer again. Grief is such a very long process.